Artist: Victor Bauer
After high school I failed to get into university, and so I went to work in the editorial office of a regional youth newspaper. At that time, we still had censors, the representatives of “OblLit” (the regional department for literature and publishing affairs). Without their signature and stamped approval, the latest issue wouldn’t go to print. This was in the late 1980s.
I would often have tea with my co-worker, whose name was Nadezhda Ivanovna, as we waited for the newspaper pages to be delivered from the print shop.
Once, she shared with me a story that transformed her life and belief system.
Her daughter Ira was about to get married, but mere days before her wedding, the groom announced that he had fallen in love with another and wouldn’t be coming with her to the registry office.
Of course, the poor girl was suffering and hurt. She thought it was a shame even to leave her home, to show face to neighbors and friends, as if it were she who had done something awful. Nadezhda Ivanovna took to ringing up all the wedding invitees herself to cancel the event. Ira spent weeks crying in her room. She shredded to pieces her wedding dress she had sewn with her mother’s help and tore up and burned the photos of her fiancé. She clammed up and shrank into herself.
Then she remembered how a friend of hers was saying something about some psychic woman. How she delivers husbands back to families, “cures” alcoholism, fights infertility, puts a spell on romance wreckers, and so on. This “benevolent” sorceress allegedly possessed special skills passed down via female lineage, having learned certain powerful rites and rituals from her great-grandmother and grandmother. Ira took the money she had set aside for buying new furniture and household things to that charlatan. She wanted “justice”, so that the groom, who left her almost on the threshold of the registry office, could be stirred up by some incident, change his mind and make his way back to her, while that groom snatcher could get the strictest of all possible punishments. Fearsome rituals—check, the money spent—check. All that was left for her to do was wait.
Nothing had happened to the groom, except that a few months later he met another “love.” As an owner of a Caucasian sheepdog participating in a dog show, he met a girl who was a member of the jury there. Some time later, his chosen one got pregnant and they got married.
The culprit of Ira’s wedding call-off also acted quickly—by marrying a military man and moving with him to Kazakhstan.
The girl decided that the meaning of life was gone, nothing good would ever happen again, and she couldn’t trust anyone anymore
Ira was desperate and it seemed to her that life had gotten better for everyone, and she was the only one who was a complete failure. The girl sank into despondency and depression. Sadly, not all her friends were able to speak tactfully to her. Some kept asking whether she had finally found her chosen one, while others complained that after “this” kind of suffering, she perhaps did have the right to fear becoming a bride again. There were even such well-wishers who diligently warned her that young guys are always wary of brides who were abandoned on the eve of the wedding… She already felt hurt enough, and now these people drew such chilling picture…
Ira dropped her studies and failed her semester exams. As a result, she was expelled from the teaching institute.
The young girl decided that the meaning of life was totally lost, nothing good would ever happen again, and one can’t trust anyone, everyone will inevitably betray you… One morning, she gathered her documents, put on the dress she was wearing when she took her entrance exams to the institute, found a sixteen-story building, went to the common balcony on its last floor and tried to take her own life. Ira was already climbing over the railing to jump down, when suddenly the balcony door opened wide and an elderly woman stepped outside. The stranger dropped her washbasin full of laundry on the floor, ran to Ira, wrapped her arms around her and forcefully pulled her towards herself. They both dropped to the floor and sat there for several minutes hugging one another; the woman was afraid that Ira would break free and finish what she planned to do. The girl was crying, mumbling something inaudible. The caring stranger said to her affectionately, “Keep crying, my child, it will get easier, but let’s go to my place and have some tea.”
Weeping bitterly and stammering, Ira quickly shared her story.
“Dear child, what were you up to? And how about your mama? She loves you, and I love you, and God loves you. It’s no accident that I happened to be with this big washbasin of mine on that balcony, because I was actually supposed to see off my grandson to music school at that very moment, but things changed at the very last moment. The bright feast of Pascha is drawing near—we will rejoice!” said Olga Mikhailovna, who held the girl back from a horrifying act.
Olga Mikhailovna turned out to be a church choir woman at the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” Icon of the Mother of God Church, which never closed down even in Soviet times. She comforted Ira:
“Maybe it is for the better that your groom showed himself this way before you two became a family. What if you got pregnant and he left you, or abandoned you during a serious illness? It’s no accident that he parted with you and his new “love.” Leave him to Heaven. As for you, you should live and enjoy life, as everything is in God’s hands.”
Olga Mikhailovna told Ira about the Orthodox faith, that God is always with us, how terrible the sin of suicide is, and how our life is a gift from God.
The singer invited Ira to go with her to church, talk to a priest and have a confession. The girl had already been baptized as a child in her grandmother’s village.
“You will see it for yourself—your heart will immediately be overcome with warmth, you will sooner or later forgive your offenders and it will get easier. Our strength is in our faith in the Lord, whereas all those psychics’ spells are cunning and devilry. It’s a sin to turn to them; we put our trust in the Lord and ask Him to have mercy on us,” Olga Mikhailovna said.
Ira told everything to her mother. Of course, Nadezhda Ivanovna feared for her daughter, and she clutched at her heart. Then she hugged Ira:
“Definitely, this choir woman was a godsend for you! Why are we wasting time sitting here, we should go to the church and ask what icons we should venerate and how to give thanks in such a situation. Because I could have lost you forever! You could have done something irreparable… From now on, I will always pray for Olga, thanking the Lord and all the saints that you are alive.”
Nadezhda Ivanovna and Ira became parishioners of that church. Both of them had confession for the first time in their lives, and those were really long confessions, full of tears and repentance. Finishing her story, Nadezhda Ivanovna said that after having a confession and receiving the Holy Communion, they walked out of the church feeling light and gravity-free, as if they had thrown off a huge burden.
I have no idea how we were living before, our life was so inadequate and cold without faith
“I felt such joy in my heart that I wanted to hug the whole world to share this joy, and to tell everyone that the Lord is so near,” the woman said sincerely. “I don’t understand how we lived before; our life was so inadequate and cold without faith. Work, food, sometimes going to a theater or a museum—but now my life gained a purpose, I know why I live, I know what is important, what is sin, repentance, and grace, and why we should pray at the Liturgy and at home...”
Ira resumed her studies in the teaching institute, as she saw herself as a teacher from as early as the fifth grade, and she wanted to teach geography and English. She also met a graduate History student, a serious and decent young man.
